Posted: 5/12/2022
Trauma survivors celebrate recovery
It was Dec. 2, 2019, his first day back at work following the Thanksgiving holiday. Wayne Elmore, then 58, climbed into his late father’s Toyota T100 pickup and headed down a small country road to Frost ISD where for the last 30 years he served as a school bus driver. “My life was good. I had a job I enjoyed, good dogs to train and compete with, and a wonderful girlfriend who entered my life in October 2015,” Elmore said. “All was going as planned.”
Until tragedy hit.
“I was traveling east. A westbound truck was passing another vehicle and was in my lane. I didn’t see him, nor did he see me until I reached the top of a small hill. We hit head-on. My airbags did not work and the seatbelt broke,” Elmore said, describing the crash.
That morning Corsicana Fire Department paramedics Jacob Sanchez and Virgil Cross were about to come off duty when they received the call about a head-on collision. They immediately grabbed their gear, called for a PHI Air Medical helicopter and headed to the scene.
“We arrived at the same time as a second ambulance and PHI,” Sanchez recalled. “Paramedics from the second ambulance went to help the other driver while Virgil, the PHI crew and I went to help Mr. Elmore.”
Sanchez, who now works as a paramedic in Parkland Memorial Hospital’s Emergency Department, said the front of Elmore’s truck was “completely mangled” and they had to work feverishly to extricate him from the vehicle.
Looking back, Sanchez said it was the worst crash he had witnessed where someone survived. “He had several broken bones and honestly, I don’t know if he would have made it if PHI didn’t have blood on board to stabilize him. He was in shock and his blood pressure was dropping.”
Once Elmore was stabilized in the field, he was airlifted to the Parkland’s Rees-Jones Trauma Center where providers jumped into action to care for their critically injured patient.
A week later Sanchez made the 50-mile drive to Parkland to get an update on his crash victim. “When I saw him at Parkland, I knew he had a long road ahead of him, but he was stable and he was going to make it,” Sanchez said. “It was a great feeling knowing that we did what our training taught us. We did our job and he was going to survive.”
Elmore’s injuries were massive. Among his broken bones were his cheek, right jaw, left wrist, all but three ribs, right ankle, right elbow as well as his right femur and humerus (the bone in the upper arm located between the elbow and shoulder). In addition, both kneecaps and his right heel were shattered, and he survived two minutes of cardio-pulmonary resuscitation (CPR) after arriving at Parkland’s trauma center. It was Elmore’s faith and sheer determination to survive that got him through five surgeries, and after seven weeks in Parkland he was transferred to an in-patient rehab facility.
On April 9, 2020, four months and one week after his near-fatal crash, “I walked out of the rehab with a walker,” Elmore said. “But the important thing is I walked out.”
Outpatient rehab followed, along with an occasional “meltdown.” Throughout his recovery, the “Miracle Man,” as Elmore has dubbed himself pushed through the pain and did whatever was asked of him by doctors, nurses and countless physical and occupational therapists. “I took whatever they said seriously because it was the only way I was going to get better,” he said.
During his recovery, Elmore married the gal who never left his side, Jolyn, and together they penned a memoir, Inspire before you expire (available on Amazon). It’s a true story, they said, of “love and survival.”
Today, Elmore says he’s about 95% of his 100% goal. He’s had to do things a little differently such as taking one step at a time as opposed to rushing up and down a flight of stairs. And he can’t just “pop out of chair like I used to,” but it’s a small price to pay knowing the alternative.
Still, Elmore talks of the day when he passed his physical and got the green light to return to work as a school bus driver for Frost ISD. “I was on Cloud 9 knowing I could get back on the bus and see all the kids again.”
And his first day back? The Monday after the Thanksgiving holiday – exactly two years to the day that his life nearly changed forever.
For more information on the services provided at Parkland, please visit our website at www.parklandhealth.org.